scholarly journals The Condition of National Minorities in Eastern Europe in a Secret Cia Report From 1965

Eminak ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 210-228
Author(s):  
Arthur Tuluș
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Security Policies ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Intelligence Service

In the context of the Cold War, detailed knowledge of the opponent and espionage were fundamental elements in the security policies of the two antagonistic sides. The CIA, the United States’ foreign intelligence service, identified the condition of ethnic minorities as one of the possible vulnerabilities of the Eastern Camp, judging from the perspective of the restrictive policies that Communist states held regarding rights and freedoms. Our study is based on the analysis of a document prepared by the CIA in 1965, a memorandum that took data from the latest official censuses in Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, and recorded the effects of assimilation policies on national minorities within the Eastern Communist states. The document is all the more interesting as the issue of national minorities rights’ in the Communist world was taboo.

Linkage Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 290-316
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Policy ◽  
Issue Linkage ◽  
Cross Domain ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The Cold War

Most discussions of cross-domain deterrence focus on variation in the means of coercion, but variation in political ends can be just as consequential. Cross-domain deterrence in the context of linkage politics, in which disparate political interests are tied together to create incentives for favorable outcomes, gives potential adversaries the opportunity to avoid confrontational meeting engagements by playing for time to clarify interests and choosing the means most suited to achieving new goals. A broader diplomatic conception of cross-domain deterrence can also highlight the potential of using financial, institutional, or other nonmilitary actions that render the threat or use of force less attractive. This chapter draws on newly available archival evidence to examine issue linkage politics in the context of changing strategic interests in the case of U.S. efforts to deter Soviet repression in Poland and East Germany at the end of the Cold War. In both cases, U.S. policymakers used diplomatic reassurance and threats of isolation to shape Soviet policy as the United States pressed its new-found political interests in Eastern Europe rather than its traditional preoccupation with military affairs.

The Role of Eastern Europe in America's Containment Policy, 1945–1948

1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-92
Author(s):  
Robert Garson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Containment Policy ◽  
The Cold War

Perhaps the greatest irony in the formative period of the Cold War is that the United States had to resign itself to the Soviets' domination of the very area in which it had at first chosen to challenge them, namely Eastern Europe. Yet America's ultimate acceptance of a Soviet hegemony in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary did not mean, as some histories of the Cold War imply in their omissions, that the status of these countries no longer concerned Washington. In the three years following World War II, American policy makers recognized that while they could not secure democracy or the “ open door ” in Eastern Europe, they could still develop policies for the area that could prove challenging to the Soviet hegemony. Their assumptions and expectations will be the subject of this article. It will show that the Truman administration believed that on developments in Eastern Europe depended the ultimate stability of the Soviet State itself. If the United States could arrest the growth of communism in the Soviet satellites, it could test the insistency of Moscow's power.

scholarly journals Yalta Decisions: Was There an Alternative for the West?

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-83
Author(s):  
Vladimir PECHATNOV
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
The Real ◽  
Common Enemy ◽  
The Cold War

The concluding results of the anti-Hitler coalition meeting in Yalta have long been criticized in the United States by the antagonists of Franklin Roosevelt’s policy. In recent decades, they have raised renewed criticism in Central and Eastern Europe and across the West. Though, the decisions of Yalta Conference were fully determined by the balance of power and the real military situation on the war theatre by spring 1945. Each of the Allies pursued their own interests, but they appeared able to achieve a mutually acceptable compromise of these interests for the sake of final victory over common enemy. The Yalta Conference manifested the last upsurge of the Allied cooperation and in no way it served a prologue to the Cold War as it is now being asserted.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

Ballet in the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.

scholarly journals Why Arms Control?

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-115
Author(s):  
Jon Brook Wolfsthal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

America survived the nuclear age through a complex combination of diplomatic and military decisions, and a good deal of luck. One of the tools that proved its value in both reducing the risks of nuclear use and setting rules for the ongoing nuclear competition were negotiated, legally binding, and verified arms control agreements. Such pacts between the United States and the Soviet Union arguably prevented the nuclear arms racing from getting worse and helped both sides climb off the Cold War nuclear precipice. Several important agreements remain in place between the United States and Russia, to the benefit of both states. Arms control is under threat, however, from domestic forces in the United States and from Russian actions that range from treaty violations to the broader weaponization of risk. But arms control can and should play a useful role in reducing the risk of nuclear war and forging a new agreement between Moscow and Washington on the new rules of the nuclear road.

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